


The Crest

by codefiant



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Backstory, Blood, Brotherly Affection, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Orphans, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 19:23:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7653715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codefiant/pseuds/codefiant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is the last of a noble house, and swore vengeance on Zarkon for the murder of his family. But first, he has to grow up on Earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Crest

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so this is half fic, half headcanon. I just started hashing it out on my lunch break one day and next thing I knew I had a proper fic. So here it is.

He is the last of a noble house.  
  
His mother kissed him and his father hugged him hard before placing him in the pod. From the window as the engines heat up he watches Zarkon’s personal guard murder his parents. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word treason, not yet, but someday he will, and for now as he rockets away from his home he clutches his father’s knife and swears revenge.  
  
When the pod lands in an empty field, he leaves it with nothing but his knife and the clothes on his back. The authorities find him two days later, hungry and cold and familyless. They take his knife away and he screams and fights them, but he is only a small child. He doesn't understand what they're saying, but he understands the social worker's miming of names. She decides that what he said sounds a little bit like Keith, so he becomes Keith.

No one has reported him missing, because there is no one to miss him. The sullen, combative child learns English in fits and bursts as he is shuffled around between foster families and group homes until he ends up with an immigrant family. He is still not trusted with his father’s knife, but when he asks for it his foster parents put it on display where he can at least see it. Knowing where it is and having it there to remind him of his vow is a comfort.  
  
It is his foster brother who finally reaches him. He too misses his place of birth. Keith stays silent about his, but he listens to Takashi talk about what he remembers, and finds in him a kindred spirit.  
  
The calm lasts until the Shiroganes decide to adopt him. They're baffled by his negative reaction, but once again it is Takashi who understands him. He doesn’t know anything about Keith's birth parents, but he knows that Keith can still love and miss them while also gaining new parents. He walks him through setting up a shrine. Takashi doesn't push him for names, and accepts Keith's family crest as the only identification offered. Keith looks at the shrine, the hodge-podge funeral years too late, and feels truly at peace for the first time in a long time.

Keith finds happiness with the Shiroganes. He is introduced to far off relatives in video calls and he doesn't understand what any of them are saying, but Takashi translates, and when he introduces himself as he was coached his new relatives beam and clap their hands together. They dub him Akira, Keith being too hard for them to say, and Keith adds it to the list. He has three names and four parents, and while the memories are bittersweet they do not engulf him as they once did.

Otousan speaks Japanese in the home, and Eomeoni and Takashi speak Korean to each other. Keith lets the words wash over him, knowing that if they need to tell him something they'll switch to English. Eventually he can hold halting, stuttering conversations in both languages, and the looks on the faces of all three when he does far outweighs the embarrassment of any mistakes. With every video call to distant relatives he can say more and more on his own, and his grandmother looks at him and says, "We named you well."

Happiness, Keith has been unfortunate enough to learn, does not last.

The front of the car was obliterated. There are scars on Takashi's back where he curled over Keith to protect him, and a long, slender one on Keith's calf from a piece of sharp metal. Their father's sister takes the next flight. She arranges the wake, the cremation, the international transport of human remains, the execution of the will, everything. Takashi has nightmares and Keith's leg hurts. Keith takes his knife in hand, remembers what he has lost, and packs it with the rest of his belongings. When their aunt leaves America, they go with her.

For Takashi it is a bit like a homecoming, albeit a tragic one. For Keith, it is another dramatic uprooting. The name Keith is shed, and he becomes Akira in every sense except legally. The Koganes' apartment is small and Takashi and Akira have to share a room, but Akira doesn't mind. Akira can be the comfort against Takashi's nightmares that Akira never had.

Akira throws himself into physical training. He hasn't yet figured out how he's going to get anywhere near Zarkon, but when he does, he'll be ready. He and Takashi make a space in their small room for a picture of their parents. Akira is surprised when Takashi hands him a second frame, but when Takashi says it's okay he draws his family crest again and it takes a place of honor next to his other parents.

For his first birthday with them, Obasan embroiders a handkerchief with his family crest. Like Takashi she doesn't know what it means, but can tell that it's important to him. Akira tries not to cry as he runs his fingers over the thread, and asks Obasan to teach him how to do it himself. It's the only embroidery he ever learns, and the only embroidery he ever needs. When he needs a moment of calm he sews it on his clothes, in places few people would see it.

Enough people mistake them for their aunt and uncle's sons that Akira and Takashi have tag-teaming their family name down to an art. "Shiro-" "-Gane!" It isn't long before Shiro and Gane become their nicknames for each other, small, laughing moments when they briefly forget that their parents are dead.

Takashi is accepted to Galaxy Garrison, back in America. When they say goodbye, Akira vows to follow him as soon as he's old enough. Their first video call, Takashi confesses something. "It feels weird now, having everyone call me Takashi again. But they think it's weird calling me Shirogane. So I told them to call me Shiro. I hope you don't mind."

Akira shakes his head. "I don't mind."

Shiro graduates at the top of his class as Akira becomes a cadet. He's right, it does feel weird for everyone to call him Akira, but he has another name to fall back on. There are expectations on Keith as Shiro's little brother, expectations which he has no trouble meeting.

There's another goodbye. It takes months to get to Kerberos, and just as many months to get back, and they're not going to spend all that time in transit just to spend a few hours on Pluto's moon. Part of Keith is hoping they'll succeed in finding evidence of alien life. Part of him is terrified of it. He knows what alien life is like.

And then.

His terror comes true.

He knows it wasn't pilot error. Shiro was at the top of his class. He knows the kind of things Shiro can fly through.

He knows what is out there.

(Shiro scratches Keith's family crest on the wall of his cell, a reminder of home. He is interrogated for days on how he knew it. He starts to wonder.)

'Discipline issue' is a simple way to put a complicated series of events, and Keith is kicked out of Galaxy Garrison. He knew it was a very real possibility with the way he was acting, but he still feels like the rug is pulled out from under him. Galaxy Garrison had been his best bet at getting to Zarkon. Now, he has nothing. Obasan and Ojisan suggest that he come home. But it's not home, not for Keith, and something is telling him to stay. He doesn't know what, not yet, but he listens to it all the same. He thinks he knows when he finds the caves with the lion carvings. They look almost like something from home, but if they are supposed to mean something to him he left too young to learn what. But he remembers enough to recognize a date when he sees it. He can only work out the equivalent Earth date down to a period of two weeks, but it's something.

The two weeks arrive, after months of waiting. Keith barely sleeps, and sets alarms on his sensors and telescopes when he does. He doesn't know what he's waiting for. Just that he's waiting for _something_.

He learns what he's been waiting for. He recognizes the shape of the ship hurtling towards Earth. He recognizes it like he recognizes his father's knife, and it rips him open raw, and he _knows_ he has to get to any survivors in the quarantine tent. And...

...It's Shiro. Keith wants to cry, he wants to laugh, he sees his arm and his scar and he knows his older brother has been through hell. For all that he was very young when his parents died he knows what hell Shiro has gone through in a way that no one else on Earth knows.

Keith and Shiro spend the night curled around each other in a way they hadn't since they were mourning their parents. And in the morning, when Shiro mentions Voltron, it takes all of Keith's effort to not react to the punch in the gut it is. He doesn't know what Voltron is, but he knows that it's powerful, and important, and, most vitally, his parents' deaths were related to it.

Keith will find this Voltron, and he will have vengeance.

(When he climbs into the cockpit of his lion, something niggles at the back of his mind. There's a sense of deja vu here. He dismisses it. Obviously he's just comforted by being around the level of technological advancement he was born into.)

In the end, it turns out that getting kicked out of Galaxy Garrison was the best way to get vengeance on Zarkon.

* * *

Some habits don't change, even in space.

An infiltration mission goes pear-shaped, and Keith is captured by galran soldiers. Their commander leers over him, forced to his knees and bound in handcuffs. Keith glares back. If they don't kill him immediately, then the other paladins will rescue him. The commander doesn't appreciate his belligerence, and yanks on the cuffs. In doing so the crest embroidered on the inner wrist of a sleeve is revealed, and the commander goes from annoyed to livid. He grabs Keith by the collar and drags him to his feet. He twists his wrist uncomfortably for all to see the crest and demands, " _Where did you learn this symbol?_ "

Keith's eyes glow yellow as he snarls back, "It is my family crest! I am the last of my house and a Paladin of Voltron, and Zarkon will pay for what he has done!"

The commander spits on him. "A forbidden crest from a disgraced house, a treasonous house! I would kill you myself if Emperor Zarkon did not want you brought to him alive! To declare allegiance to such a house is on penalty of death!"

"I do not need to declare allegiance to my house. I _am_ my house!" And with that Keith feels the fury come upon him. He feels the druid magic flow through him and the cuffs snap apart. His arms wrap around the commander's neck, and it breaks with an audible _snap!_ The body drops to the floor, dead weight.

Keith spins slowly, silently daring the stunned soldiers to shoot. He knows who will be the first before even they do, and he pounces.

The slaughter ends with him drenched in Galran blood. Some of it is even his own. He drags one of the bodies over to the wall and draws the crest of his house on the wall in blood. Underneath he writes, in Galran, "OUR HOUSE WILL HAVE VENGEANCE ON ZARKON."

He's about to put his name, his true name, to the wall in blood when his ears prick at the door opening behind him. He spins, hissing, but the hiss dies when he sees who it is. It's Shiro and Pidge.

He watches them as they take in the carnage, his armor, the blood, his crest on the wall. Pidge is the first to move. She throws her arm forward, bayard in hand, and it shoots out, hitting him in the stomach. Expecting the strong electric shock doesn't make it any easier, and he passes out.

* * *

Keith comes to in the cockpit of Green. Pidge is piloting, glancing at him suspiciously, but Shiro is kneeling in front of him. When he can see that he's conscious, he greets him. "Akira."

"Takashi," Akira responds, only slurring a little bit as feeling comes back to him. He can feel his injuries for the first time since his adrenaline surged. He's not in good shape. But there's more important things to worry about.

Takashi smiles softly, and thumbs Akira's sleeve, the crest on his wrist. "Is there something you'd like to tell me, otouto?"

Akira glances up at Pidge. Their eyes meet for a moment before Pidge looks away. Akira switches to English, for her benefit. "Zarkon sent his personal guard to murder my parents for treason," he tells the floor. "I watched it happen."

"Now you want to kill him." Akira startles, painfully, and looks up at Takashi. It had been Galran that he had spoken. "Learn a lot in a year," he explains.

"Zarkon is as guilty of murdering my parents as he would be if he had pulled the trigger himself. I swore to kill him with my father's knife, and I will."

Takashi frowns, and responds in English, "I didn't learn that much."

Silence, for a moment. Then Pidge finally speaks up. "Why did you, uh," she pauses, searching for the words. "You were a galra. And then after you fell unconscious, you became a human. Again."

Keith sighs. "My mother knew something of the druidic arts. She hid my appearance. I think... I think I pulled from my own quintessence to break through it for a while. Then you knocked me out." He starts to lift his hand to brush his hair out of his face, but doesn't make it far before he's wincing and curling in on himself. "Owww."

Shiro's hands, knowing exactly where to touch him that won't cause more pain, are a comfort. "Careful there. We did what we could, but you're going to have to spend some time in a healing pod when we get back."

"What... what will you tell the others?"

The million dollar question. Pidge and Shiro share a long, hard look. Finally, Pidge says, "I won't tell them if you don't want me to."

Shiro looks back at Keith. "You're a Paladin of Voltron. That's all that matters to us. Anyone who says otherwise, well, that's what older brothers are for, right?"

Keith smiles. "Right."

Once they've docked back at the Castle Shiro helps Keith onto his feet and then, after a few wobbling, painful, stubborn steps on his own, the rest of the way to a healing pod. Adrenaline, it turns out, is one hell of a drug. Both Lance and Hunk visibly wince at the sight of him. Pidge still keeps her distance, but Keith knows she won't go back on her word. Not unless she has very good reason to. Allura helps Shiro get him out of his armor, and as he feels the effects of the pod pull him into unconsciousness, it's a lot more pleasant then he expected.

* * *

 When Keith wakes up in the pod, his whole body is numb.

That's the first thing he notices. The second, after the front of the pod slides away, is that his eyesight is a little wonky. The numbness was clear enough to anyone who had seen Lance stumble out of his that one time, but he hadn't mentioned anything about his eyesight.

Just as Keith is about to fall over, Shiro is there to catch him. "Steady there." Gently he lowers both of them to the ground. Keith's eyes look down as he does so, and that's the third thing he notices.

His hands are purple. “Shiro. What happened?”

Shiro gives a grimace of a smile. “You changed back while in the healing pod. I, uh, had to explain a few things. Allura thinks that whatever it was your mother did to you, the pod saw it as a sickness to be healed. So it did.”

Keith flexes his hand, the sharp nails. He had had other things on his mind earlier, and no space to think about his body. Now, he can feel the differences. He realizes with a start that he can _see_ the differences in how the world looks to him now. “And what... what do the others think?”

Shiro smiles. “Allura and Coran knew galrans before Zarkon decided to make himself emperor. Coran said that the species was not ever entirely aligned with Zarkon, up to the very end. The fact that your parents were executed for treason makes it clear that that's still the case.

“But far more importantly, Akira: you were raised on Earth. You're my otouto. If they have a problem with you, they have a problem with me. It's that simple.”

Akira hugs Takashi tightly, careful not to scratch him with his claws. “Niisan.” His eyes water up.

It's more than he'd ever dreamed of.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on Tumblr: codefiant.tumblr.com


End file.
